The Protocols of the Elders of Liberalism

Recently The New York Times published an op-ed by Roger Cohen about the Anders Behring Breivik attacks in Norway that openly accuses Christians, Conservatives and Tea Party people of promoting mass murder and mayhem.Cohen pulls no punches here. For example:

"Breivik is no loner. His violence was brewed in a specific European environment that shares characteristics with the specific American environment of (Gabrielle Giffords' shooter Jared) Loughner: relative economic decline, a jobless recovery, middle-class anxiety and high levels of immigration serving as the backdrop for racist Islamophobia and use of the spurious specter of a "Muslim takeover" as a wedge political issue to channel frustrations rightward."

A nice try, except Loughner suffered from none of these; he was a heavy drug user (thank you liberals), a fairly well-off college youth who was likely in love with Rep. Giffords. He never spoke of economic problems, anxiety, or immigration as having anything to do with what he did. Yet the media immediately tried to tar conservatives with Loughner, and here Cohen continues to do so against all evidence. And in the aftermath of Loughner we were told we needed to ratchet down the extreme political discourse, yet here we have Cohen openly accusing our side of promoting mass murder - hardly what one would call toned-down rhetoric.

Perhaps Mr. Cohen was not taught that Nationalism was a liberal concept, having its genesis in Rousseauian ideas of popular sovereignty and the national will. Rousseau believed that a people and their nation were indivisible, and he welcomed a veneration of the People and the Nation as a way to better unify the State -- and as a way to weaken the power of the nobility and the Church, which he clearly viewed as an impediment to progress. Europe would adopt this concept of Nationalism (as opposed to Patriotism, love for one's country) and it would reach its ultimate expression in the Fascism of Italy and the Nazism of Germany. These were liberal ideas. It is no coincidence that the most virulently nationalistic system in history was also a socialist entity; the National Socialist German Worker's Party.

Nationalism in the modern sense of the word is no more conservative an idea than the Sexual Revolution; it is a denying of traditions and restraints.

Cohen goes on to say:

"Breivik has many ideological fellow travelers on both sides of the Atlantic. Theirs is the poison in which he refined his murderous resentment. The enablers include Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, who compared the Koran to "Mein Kampf" on his way to 15.5 percent of the vote in the 2010 election; the surging Marine Le Pen in France, who uses Nazi analogies as she pours scorn on devout Muslims; far-rightist parties in Sweden and Denmark and Britain equating every problem with Muslim immigration; Republicans like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Representative Peter King, who have found it politically opportune to target "creeping Shariah in the United States" at a time when the middle name of the president is Hussein; U.S. church pastors using their bully pulpits week after week to say America is a Christian nation under imminent threat from Islam."

So now Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen, Newt Gingrich, Peter King are all the equivalent of Breivik and Osama Bin Laden; monsters itching to kill! kill! kill! Subhuman brutes on the verge of genocide. And any attempt to defend ourselves is an act of aggression against a harmless people who just happen to cut off heads, blow up pizza parlors and airplanes, etc. No! The real villains are those E-VIL right wingers who say "you will not destroy us".

We have seen this in liberals at least since the assassination of John Kennedy; Lee Harvey Oswald was a communist, yet liberals have invented all manner of conspiracy theories pinning his murder on the Right. Yet when John Hinckley Jr. shot Ronald Reagan it was a disturbed man to the media. We've had Timothy McVeigh pinned on Rush Limbaugh and conservative talk radio, yet Major Hassan's little Allah Akbar! moment was said to have nothing to do with radical Islam. (McVeigh was a Nazi, an atheist, and by his own admission a man of the Left.) Remember the leftist who flew his plane into the Texas IRS building? He was immediately linked to the Tea Parties by the left and their lapdog media. Remember the Missouri Fusion Center report? Remember the DHS report warning of "conservative terrorists", people like returning veterans, Christians, pro-lifers, etc.? There has been an ongoing effort to demonize good, normal Americans. And there has been an even longer attempt to destroy Christianity, the cornerstone of Western Civilization. Promoting the idea of a "parity of evil" between religions, the notion that Islam and Christianity are just as malignant, is a high priority for the Left, particularly the atheistic Left.

This has been a long-term, concerted campaign to smear us.

And the despicable Roger Cohen has shown just what kind of man he is; he has gone beyond shameless here. This is a blood libel. It is the moral equivalent of the Protocols; a monstrous lie designed to demonize. The Protocols led ultimately to the Holocaust. Does Cohen care that he may be the source of something similar for Christians and conservatives in the future?

And had Cohen bothered to actually read Breivik's manifesto rather than just cherry pick it, he would know that Breivik plagiarized much of it from a radical environmentalist/leftist named Ted Kaczynski aka the Unabomber. He would further know that Breivik's "Christianity" admitted "Christian Atheists" and other nihilists, and that the manifesto destroys the entire "Christian terrorist" narrative being advanced by Cohen.

The demonization will continue.

Timothy Birdnow is a St. Louis based writer. His website is www.tbirdnow.mee.nu

Recently The New York Times published an op-ed by Roger Cohen about the Anders Behring Breivik attacks in Norway that openly accuses Christians, Conservatives and Tea Party people of promoting mass murder and mayhem.

Cohen pulls no punches here. For example:

"Breivik is no loner. His violence was brewed in a specific European environment that shares characteristics with the specific American environment of (Gabrielle Giffords' shooter Jared) Loughner: relative economic decline, a jobless recovery, middle-class anxiety and high levels of immigration serving as the backdrop for racist Islamophobia and use of the spurious specter of a "Muslim takeover" as a wedge political issue to channel frustrations rightward."

A nice try, except Loughner suffered from none of these; he was a heavy drug user (thank you liberals), a fairly well-off college youth who was likely in love with Rep. Giffords. He never spoke of economic problems, anxiety, or immigration as having anything to do with what he did. Yet the media immediately tried to tar conservatives with Loughner, and here Cohen continues to do so against all evidence. And in the aftermath of Loughner we were told we needed to ratchet down the extreme political discourse, yet here we have Cohen openly accusing our side of promoting mass murder - hardly what one would call toned-down rhetoric.

Perhaps Mr. Cohen was not taught that Nationalism was a liberal concept, having its genesis in Rousseauian ideas of popular sovereignty and the national will. Rousseau believed that a people and their nation were indivisible, and he welcomed a veneration of the People and the Nation as a way to better unify the State -- and as a way to weaken the power of the nobility and the Church, which he clearly viewed as an impediment to progress. Europe would adopt this concept of Nationalism (as opposed to Patriotism, love for one's country) and it would reach its ultimate expression in the Fascism of Italy and the Nazism of Germany. These were liberal ideas. It is no coincidence that the most virulently nationalistic system in history was also a socialist entity; the National Socialist German Worker's Party.

Nationalism in the modern sense of the word is no more conservative an idea than the Sexual Revolution; it is a denying of traditions and restraints.

Cohen goes on to say:

"Breivik has many ideological fellow travelers on both sides of the Atlantic. Theirs is the poison in which he refined his murderous resentment. The enablers include Geert Wilders in the Netherlands, who compared the Koran to "Mein Kampf" on his way to 15.5 percent of the vote in the 2010 election; the surging Marine Le Pen in France, who uses Nazi analogies as she pours scorn on devout Muslims; far-rightist parties in Sweden and Denmark and Britain equating every problem with Muslim immigration; Republicans like former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Representative Peter King, who have found it politically opportune to target "creeping Shariah in the United States" at a time when the middle name of the president is Hussein; U.S. church pastors using their bully pulpits week after week to say America is a Christian nation under imminent threat from Islam."

So now Geert Wilders, Marine Le Pen, Newt Gingrich, Peter King are all the equivalent of Breivik and Osama Bin Laden; monsters itching to kill! kill! kill! Subhuman brutes on the verge of genocide. And any attempt to defend ourselves is an act of aggression against a harmless people who just happen to cut off heads, blow up pizza parlors and airplanes, etc. No! The real villains are those E-VIL right wingers who say "you will not destroy us".

We have seen this in liberals at least since the assassination of John Kennedy; Lee Harvey Oswald was a communist, yet liberals have invented all manner of conspiracy theories pinning his murder on the Right. Yet when John Hinckley Jr. shot Ronald Reagan it was a disturbed man to the media. We've had Timothy McVeigh pinned on Rush Limbaugh and conservative talk radio, yet Major Hassan's little Allah Akbar! moment was said to have nothing to do with radical Islam. (McVeigh was a Nazi, an atheist, and by his own admission a man of the Left.) Remember the leftist who flew his plane into the Texas IRS building? He was immediately linked to the Tea Parties by the left and their lapdog media. Remember the Missouri Fusion Center report? Remember the DHS report warning of "conservative terrorists", people like returning veterans, Christians, pro-lifers, etc.? There has been an ongoing effort to demonize good, normal Americans. And there has been an even longer attempt to destroy Christianity, the cornerstone of Western Civilization. Promoting the idea of a "parity of evil" between religions, the notion that Islam and Christianity are just as malignant, is a high priority for the Left, particularly the atheistic Left.

This has been a long-term, concerted campaign to smear us.

And the despicable Roger Cohen has shown just what kind of man he is; he has gone beyond shameless here. This is a blood libel. It is the moral equivalent of the Protocols; a monstrous lie designed to demonize. The Protocols led ultimately to the Holocaust. Does Cohen care that he may be the source of something similar for Christians and conservatives in the future?

And had Cohen bothered to actually read Breivik's manifesto rather than just cherry pick it, he would know that Breivik plagiarized much of it from a radical environmentalist/leftist named Ted Kaczynski aka the Unabomber. He would further know that Breivik's "Christianity" admitted "Christian Atheists" and other nihilists, and that the manifesto destroys the entire "Christian terrorist" narrative being advanced by Cohen.

The demonization will continue.

Timothy Birdnow is a St. Louis based writer. His website is www.tbirdnow.mee.nu